The Grandparent Dilemma

Increasingly today extended family members are being called upon by an unending variety of circumstances, including at the request of one or both parents, to assist in the day to day care and rearing of minor children.  There are a growing number of situations where it is or it becomes essential or expedient for the welfare of children that grandparents, other adult relatives, adult siblings, and even familial strangers step forward and assume the role of what becomes akin to that of de facto parents.  Today's economic circumstances and the inability of State and local governments to provide meaningful aid and shelter to families assures that the frequency and urgency of this experience will only increase.

Children are placed with relatives by Child Protective Services (CPS/DPSS) as an alternative to foster care or out of home placement; some parents are victims of domestic violence and are unable to care for their offspring; other parents are so burdened with personal, educational, or economic matters or are themselves barely adult children, so that they are forced to rely upon trusted family members to assume a day to day role with children as they work through their own challenges; sometimes one or both parents winds up incarcerated, or in a drug rehabilitation program, or on the street, or in an institution for psychological disturbance; and still others are simply seeking work or education where they can find or obtain it, but in all of these and many more situations biological and legal parents may simply not competent or able to provide emotionally or financially for the children. 

Usually, these parents have become victims of their circumstance, and it is necessary they look to others for help if only temporarily.  It is entirely natural they would look to their own parents for this support and grandparents are assuming a larger and larger role in parenting today babies, adolescents, and teenage children.  It is honorable that grandparents would assume that role.

There are any number of less dramatic varieties of these circumstances, including grandparents providing financial aid to their children, or opening up their homes, or providing daycare, babysitting, transportation, and supervision.

Grandparent Rights is About the Rights of Children

These circumstances all have one thing in common:  Our society is relying on its elder family members to undertake roles with respect to children which the previous generation rarely anticipated, at least as we see it today (ironically, all healthy tribal and ancient peoples and cultures depended heavily upon the continuity of elders).  There are many consequences that flow from this.  These range from the question of how we and the law treat and protect the bonding and attachments that form between grandchild and grandparents, especially when parents decide for sometimes good, but sometimes reactive and destructive reasons to sever or limit that bond.  This is a question that has more to do with the loving and trusting relationships that characterize young human beings, and the effect that cutting that bond can have on the well-being of children, then it does on grandparent rights.  Deep, valid and even urgent concerns can arise about the emotional, physical, and financial well-being of these least protected members of our society.

It is important for all of us and the human web of which we are a part that grandparent rights be understood and properly balanced together with the rights of parents, and especially the rights of our smallest members.  Grandparent rights can take the form of custodial arrangements, or simply visitation.  Grandparents can obtain custody of children if they can meet certain criteria.